44 He turned the River and its streams to blood - not a drop of water fit to drink. 45 He sent flies, which ate them alive, and frogs, which bedeviled them. 46 He turned their harvest over to caterpillars, everything they had worked for to the locusts. 47 He flattened their grapevines with hail; a killing frost ruined their orchards. 48 He pounded their cattle with hail, let thunderbolts loose on their herds. 49 His anger flared, a wild firestorm of havoc, An advance guard of disease-carrying angels 50 to clear the ground, preparing the way before him. He didn't spare those people, he let the plague rage through their lives. 51 He killed all the Egyptian firstborns, lusty infants, offspring of Ham's virility.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Psalm 78:44-51
Commentary on Psalm 78:40-55.
(Read Psalm 78:40-55.)
Let not those that receive mercy from God, be thereby made bold to sin, for the mercies they receive will hasten its punishment; yet let not those who are under Divine rebukes for sin, be discouraged from repentance. The Holy One of Israel will do what is most for his own glory, and what is most for their good. Their forgetting former favours, led them to limit God for the future. God made his own people to go forth like sheep; and guided them in the wilderness, as a shepherd his flock, with all care and tenderness. Thus the true Joshua, even Jesus, brings his church out of the wilderness; but no earthly Canaan, no worldly advantages, should make us forget that the church is in the wilderness while in this world, and that there remaineth a far more glorious rest for the people of God.